caudy, from his occupation of tending cattle, been sent by Rat Renehan to watch the cows, and take care that they should not trample upon and injure the newly set potatoes. The influence of the " Hungry Grass" was exercised with more than usual severity upon selfish and hard-hearted Solomon. When the boy came to see why he fell, and what could have been the matter with him, he found that he was speechless and apparently insensible. He thought the man was dead, and with all expedition made his report to the neighbours accordingly. The latter having procured a door, came immediately to convey the unfortunate bridegroom home; but upon consulting with each other, they deemed it better to carry him directly to the priest's house, in the hope that he might be able to render him some assistance; or, at all events, to administer to him the last sacrament, provided it might be found that life was in him. It was, then, when those who were assembled there, now in a state of the greatest excitement at his unaccountable absence, that he was presented to them, heels foremost, upon the door. Nothing could exceed the alarm and dismay occasioned by his appearance in such a state; and, of all days in the year, upon that of his wedding, just when his foot was upon the very threshold of happiness. All that was evil about him, (and there was enough,) all his mockery of the poor and distressed-all his notorious dishonesty and his wanton hardness of heart-all, all were forgotten in this terrible and unexpected event. On examining him there was only one opinion among them, that the illfated and unfortunate man was past all hope and all remedy.

"This," said the priest, "is certainly a most unfortunate circumstance; there can be no marriage here on this day. My friends, you must return home, and let the melancholy fate of this man be a warning to you all that you should hold yourselves always prepared for death, for you see clearly that no one can tell at what hour it may come upon him."

"Begging your pardon, sir," said Mat's uncle, advancing into the middle of the room as he spoke, "this marriage was considered, by every person that knew the parties and heard of it, to be one that couldn't be

attended with either good luck or happiness. The poor girl herself was forced to it, at a time when everybody knew that her heart was fixed upon another. Her father refused the man she loved because he was poor; but he's my nephew, and I say he's no longer poor. All that I have I bestow upon him, and have left him in my will that I made no longer ago than yesterday. And now, I say, what has happened cannot be undone; but, in the mean time, I cannot see why that ought to prevent two young people that loves one another from bein' made happy this very minute. Rat Renehan, you would have given your daughter to my nephew if I had consented to help him with my property. Now, I say,

I do consent; from this day out, provided his reverence marries them this minute, he is and will be masther of all I'm worth. Speak up, Rat Renehan, for it's now or never. I owe my life to this boy, and I'll stand by him to the last. Speak up, then, I say, for it's now or never."

Renehan was not prepared for such a quick and determined turn of good fortune in favour of his daughter. He had that very morning experienced some twinges of remorse on witnessing the utter misery which she felt, and now that an opportunity of marrying her to the man of her own heart and affections, and that man no longer a poor man, had come, he thanked God that it had come, and immediately gave his consent to their union.

"Rose," said he, "what do you say? I know what you think.”

Oh, no," she replied, "not on this day, not on this day; it wouldn't be right or becomin'."

"On this day," replied old Magennis; "either now or never. If you are not married before you leave this room, I will burn the will I made and leave my nephew just as I found him. If you are not his wife, Rose, I desert him."

What could poor Rose do? There was to have been a wedding; every one was prepared for it. Rose was pressed, her father was pressed, the priest was pressed; and we all know that a willing heart is easily pressed. In fact, the parties present insisted that the marriage should go on; and that those who

had been designed for each other by God and their own hearts, should then and there be united. Modest and delicate Rose suffered herself to be at length prevailed upon, and the ceremony accordingly took place with the consent of all present. The moment it was over and the bride kissed by her exulting husband, that worthy young fellow addressed himself to the spectators.

"Wait a little," said he; "who knows but there may be life in poor Solomon yet? Stay as you are for a few minutes till I see him."

He then passed into the priest's kitchen, where he was provided with a farrel of oaten-bread; from thence he proceeded to the door on which Solomon lay stretched; he seized him by the collar of the coat; he raised him up; he shook him; and after a little found that he breathed. He then opened his mouth, and crumbling a portion of the bread into it, the man made an effort and swallowed it. The effect was astonishing. He opened his eyes, and looking about him, exclaimed-"Give me more of that, I am perishing with hunger." He then took a few mouthfuls voraciously, after which he rose up with as much strength and vigour as ever he had possessed in his life.

"God bless me!" said he, "what was the matter? What has happened me? Where is Rose? The dear girl must have been been sadly disappointed. All's right, however; here I am, and now let our marriage go on."

"I'm afeard, Solomon," said Mat, looking at him with a comic grin; "I'm afeard, my worthy friend, that, as the proverb goes, you're a day afther the fair. Do you see this sweet and purty girl here ?"

"Do I see her? To be sure I do." "Well, then, you see my wife; for I assure you, Solomon, that we've just got married as fast as the church could make us. His reverence here has buckled us to for life, with the full consent of all parties, while you were taking a comfortable nap on the door there."

Solomon, on hearing the corroboration of this from the priest and all who were present, seemed certainly rather nettled; but still the disappointment did not appear to lie so heavily upon him as might have been expected. He gazed around him,

however, with considerable astonishment; and as he did, it so happened that the first person his eyes rested on was Miss Katsey M'Faudeen, dressed in complete panoply, horsewhip and all; for, indeed, she seldom or never went without it.

Katsey on catching his eye laughed very heartily at his discomfiture, and said

"I think, Solomon, after all we had better do it; it's a clear case that the noose was made for us above. What do you say? Shall it be a match? Think of my mother's cash, and the long leases. Now or never, as Andrew Magennis said."

Solomon scratched his head with a puzzled face; but, after a little hesitation, he said

"Why then, Katsey, if I have been disappointed in one wife, I'll show them that I'm not so far gone but I can get another, and every bit as quickly as she got a husband too. So, in the name of God, here's, as you say, for your mother's purse, and the long leases."

Now all this, in the first place, was considered an excellent piece of fun and banter by the spectators; but judge of their astonishment on seeing the pair in question seriously kneel down before the priest, and on witnessing, too, that worthy gentleman solemnly performing the ceremony of marriage between them.

When it was duly solemnized, Katsey, who seemed to enjoy the thing very much, addressed her husband in the following words :

"Well, darlin'," said she, "didn't I tell you the other day that I'd have the cookin' of you yet, and so I will; and if I don't do you to a turn, I'm not here." And as she uttered the words, she significantly shook the horsewhip at him as an illustration of her meaning.

We need scarcely say now that the parish of Clogher ;-the town of Clogher, by the way was formerly a city, the city of the Golden Stone-cloghoir being in English the golden stone-but Ireland will never be without a blunder; no matter, the more the merrier; at all events, the town and parish were in an ecstatic tumult of fun, delight, and rejoicing at the double marriage that had been accomplished so comically. Jemmy Breen, the sexton, rang the cathe

dral bells to a merry tune, and the good old Protestant Bishop, Porter, absolutely relaxed from his dignity and laughed heartily at the double event. Here was Solomon Saveall, the son of extortion, the unconquered hero of knavery, the merry miser, the knave, the cheat, and the heart of stone, here was he with all his selfishness, with all his caution and shrewd dexterity of management, seen by his neighbours going off to priest M'Cardle's house to get married to the amiable, good, and beautiful Rose Renehan; and returning from the said house tacked hard and fast to one of the most formidable and tremendous viragos that ever was in the parish; and that, too, with the appropriate emblem of her authority, the redoubtable horsewhip firmly tucked under her athletic arm. This triumph over Solomon was what set honest Jemmy Breen and his bells agoing, and the people, too, into such a fury of delight.

The next morning Mrs. Saveall, a name anything but appropriate in her person, came down stairs, and when she and Solomon met at breakfast, she whipped off a glass of excellent Ballygawly whiskey, and thus addressed him.

66 Now, Solomon, I have you at last, and upon my word and conscience I'll take care of you. The principle upon which you married me was like every thing else you do and think, merely selfish. You were disappointed in getting Rose Renehan, and for her sake I am glad of it; then why did you marry me? I'll give you your own words-here's for your mother's purse and the long leases. Now, in the first place, I have to tell you that neither my mother nor myself are worth six pence if our debts were paid; and in the next place I have to inform you that the long leases expired yesterday; but then you know if you lost the leases, you gained a wife that will put you through your facings --hem !"

We would not for the world attempt to describe the hue of Solomon's complexion whilst listening to those unexpected and astounding revelations, but it is said to have resembled the pale side of a lobster's claw. In fact this day closed Solomon's glory. Henceforth he was a subdued man, the swagger was tho

roughly taken out of him, be became in fact a grave personage, and almost forgot how to laugh. But what was

more and by far the greatest miracle of all, honest Katsey absolutely made him benevolent and taught him charity to the poor. Scarcely a case of distress or affliction was ever brought to her knowledge to which she did not prevail upon her generous husband to contribute. We will not allude to the kind of logic by which she convinced him; but we will say that she had the grace to give him as much credit in the eves of the world for the act as if it had been a voluntary one. In due time poor Sol. assumed or rather shrunk into his proper dimensions. In fact he became a poor, cowardly, sneaking, subdued sinner-with no character, no voice, no authority in his own house, in which he only found himself a lodger upon sufferance. His face became ashy, his voice infirm and submissive, his squint perplexing, but still with a good deal of circumspective terror in it; altogether the neighbours began to pity him, and to offer him consolation. This, however, he refused in any shape unless that of whiskey. He began to slip into town, either to Jemmy M'Quade's publichouse, or to Andy Trimble's. began to get shaky on his legs, to talk of Providence and Retributive Justice, and to give strong hints that he intended to change his lodgings. In this he was serious, for he kept his word sooner than was expected. He went to bed one night without exactly understanding what he did, but somehow poor Solomon forgot to awaken. He now lies buried in the south side of Clogher churchyard, with a grave of course, but without any monument or record except what is to be found in these pages. His wife survived him many years, still played cards, tossed up with her workmen of a Saturday night for double or quits, was kind and charitable to the poor, and though rude, boisterous and rough, left a good name and kind recollections behind her when she departed.

He

To return to Rose and the morning after the happy marriage. Our superstition has a double meaning, one signifying Fair Gurtha, or the Hungry Grass, the other Far Gurtha, or the Man of Hunger. On the morning after the marriage it became known,

principally through a weird woman strongly suspected of being a witch, (and not without good reason, for she was both old and decrepid) by name Mary M'Quade from Aughentain,-that the incidents which occasioned the two marriages in a manner so contrary to the expectations of the parties concerned, were brought about by the facts that old Magennis and Solomon Saveall had passed over hungry grass, and hence the results that occurred. This, however, was not all. She informed them that the next harvest's crop would be a failure, and the following year a year of famine and consequent pestilence. It was well known in several parts of Ireland, she said, that the Far Gurtha, or Man of Hunger, never made his appearance in the country that it was not followed by famine and death. He went about, she added, in the very shape of Hunger, an old man scarcely able to walk, asking charity here and there as if at the very point of death from starvation. well for those who assisted him, but wo to the man or woman who put him away with a hard answer.

It was

Be this as it may, the prognostication associated with his appearance

was wofully and fearfully verified. The next year is still painful to the recollections of those who remember it. And here again we return to Rose. During the prevalence of the famine, and the decimating epidemic which it generated, she was a ministering angel to the poor and friendless. She and her husband lived with her father; and we cannot pay a higher tribute to her virtues than to say that by her charity, her kindness, and her affection to all, but especially to him, she ultimately succeeded in softening and humanizing his hard spirit; and that with such effect, that he joined her in all her many works of charity, and suffered his heart to be kindled at the flame of her pure and exalted devotion. She became the mother of a fine family, and it is unnecessary to say that she and her excellent husband enjoyed all the happiness they deserved, and which this earth could afford them in their humble but comfortable state of life. And now, gentle reader, we have given you the old Irish superstition, including its beautiful moral, of the Fair Gurtha, or the Hungry Grass.

A GALLERY of Dutch paintings-the Dutch corner of a gallery---nay, even the smallest cabinet collection of originals, or copies of old Dutch masters-is, in fact, as nothing without its specimen, in some one of the manifold Dutch manifestations of the character, of that unaccountably eccentric, close-fisted old cove-the miser. Without him, with his customary cap and gabardine, and bags full of guilders, your collection of Dutch masters you Mynheer--what's this you call yourself-is in our eyes, give us leave to tell you, not worth as much as a stiver. It is incomplete, scant, imperfect; has a certain air of emptiness about it, a certain want of effect; and is, in short, for all the world, as the old comparison hath it-

like the representation of Hamlet, with the part of Hamlet, by particular desire, omitted. No, dear worthy patron of the art pictorial-No:-thou may'st have in thy collection alehouses, and kitchens, and marketplaces, and blacksmiths' shops; thou inay'st be rich in ponderous burgomasters, in jaunty, smirking, buxom, roundabout damsels, in drowsing, toping, vagabondizing loiterers, killing time over swipes and tobacco, or regaling their sense of sound with guitars, or fifes, or hurdy-gurdies; thou may'st exult in the possession of fishermen and fishmongers, in needy knife-grinders, and conjurors, and astrologers, and alchemists; and, again, being of rural tastes, thou may'st be the proprietor of horses, and dogs,

and sheep, and sleek "short horns" of the genuine old Dutch breed, and pleasant stripes of flat pasture, and windmills, and tow-boats on willowfringed canals; or mayhap thou hast come into the ownership of some one or more of Master Philip Wouvermans' hunting parties, or halts of cavalry, or rasping skirmishes a la Cossack, and Bashi-Bazouk; or, peradventure, with the aid of the Vanderveldes, thou hast been laying up a stock of menof-war, and merchantmen, and cockboats, and pinnaces, and cutters, and wherries, and luggers, and brigs, and schooners, and what not, of naval architecture-to say nothing of calms, and gales, and hurricanes, and sea fights,-in short of all this, most worthy and notable patron of the fine arts, you may chance to be in proud possession, and of a deal more too into the bargain, that we have not time or breath just at present to enumerate; and yet, what is, or what were, this same pictorial collection, give us leave to ask, without your including therein not one specimen merely, but several and sundry specimens of that quintessence, and, so to speak, personification and embodiment of the quaint, stiff, and old-fashioned, but, nevertheless, rich humour and vigor of the old Dutch school-the miser, that miser above all other misers the dear, delightful, genuine old Dutch miser? What! present us, forsooth, with Dutch art, minus its misers! You might as well dream of presenting Italian art without its Madonnas. Only think for one moment of all the misers, and grim usurious skinflints that Rembrandt alone has painted--himself, by the way, one of the choicest specimens of the class that ever lived. Are there not misers absolutely innumerable from the pencils of Maas, Steen, Vandervenne, Van Ostade, and a thousand other Vans? Nay, did not the artistic furor for miser-painting rage so high among the honest Hollanders, that it burst its way across the frontier, and set agog the wits of Flemish art, in the persons of the Teniers, Quentin Matsys, and innumerable others? The miser is, in fact, par excellence, and emphatically, the character of the Dutch school. The national taste and temper of the worthy Hollanders must, somehow or other, have a na

tural bias and leaning towards this same subject; the artists having made it their theme, at least as much with the view of pleasing the public, as with that of pleasing themselves. It is a curious fact indeed, no less singular than true; and upon which, did our pen take that turn, a good deal more might be said.

Now, we have, in a prior part of these readings, observed what a very remarkable conformity may be traced between the sundry subjects of the Colloquies on the one hand, and those subjects on the other, which form the staple materials of the old Dutch school of painters. In both, we see the same inns, and alehouses, and kitchens, and market-places, and road-sides, and gardens-the same roistering and rollicking, the same drinking matches, and merry-makings, and love-makings ;-in both we see the same selfimportant burgo-masters, and swaggering soldiers, and buxom damsels, and fishmongers, and butchers, and horsedealers, and alchemists: and, as honest, old "Desiderius Erasmus

Roterodamus" is a true Dutch artist of the pen, racy of the soil, and gifted, of course, with the national taste for miser-painting, we may see, amid the varied picturesqueness of his drollery-lifelike, and conspicuous, and painted in true Erasmian colours the miser also. In fact, unless he were prepared to renege and disown his dear native Rotterdam, and, with it, all Holland itself into the bargain, its tastes and its sympathies, how could he, a pen-and-ink artist moreover-a true" word-painter," as Carlyle, we believe, has the term -how could he, we say, with all his national recollections and predilections about him, have brought himself, when sketching a whole gallery of characters, to omit the miser from the lot that character, without whose express pourtrayal, he would have felt his Colloquial Gallery to be painfully incomplete, and in favour of whose pictorial presence he felt himself, as a Hollander, peculiarly prejudiced?

And now, let us, thus much premised and without more ado, betake ourselves to Erasmus's grand penand-ink cartoon of the Miser. Ah! here it is--the "Opulentia Sordida," a title which we have taken the li